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“This is not the computer for you”

samhenri.gold

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Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#31

Post by artimaeis »

wolvoleo wrote: post #21
TheDong wrote: post #19

> The kid who tries to run Blender on a Chromebook doesn’t learn that his machine can’t handle it. He learns that Google decided he’s not allowed to. Or they learn to enable developer mode, unlock the bootloader, and install Linux, or use the officially supported Crostini, or so on. There's like 3 different ways to run Linux desktop apps on a modern Chromebook. The Macbooks don't let have an officially supported path…

You can't install a different OS on these? Are they different from the M series? Because those have Asahi Linux.

Asahi only supports M1 and M2 series Macs currently. The Neo uses an A18 Pro, which was only ever in an iPhone before. I wouldn’t count on Asahi coming to these soon.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#32

Post by TheDong »

wolvoleo wrote: post #21
TheDong wrote: post #19

> The kid who tries to run Blender on a Chromebook doesn’t learn that his machine can’t handle it. He learns that Google decided he’s not allowed to. Or they learn to enable developer mode, unlock the bootloader, and install Linux, or use the officially supported Crostini, or so on. There's like 3 different ways to run Linux desktop apps on a modern Chromebook. The Macbooks don't let have an officially supported path…

You can't install a different OS on these? Are they different from the M series? Because those have Asahi Linux.

Asahi linux effectively only supports the M1 and M2 chips, so even a modern macbook air won't work, and even on "supported devices" you can't use thunderbolt or a usb-c display yet.

These use the A series chip, and even supporting new M chip revisions has been enough of an undertaking that I wouldn't really expect this to get Asahi linux anytime soon....

And apple can lock down the bootloader to be closer to the iPad/iPhone at any time with no notice, and based on their past actions, it would be quite in-line with their character to do so.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#34

Post by MBCook »

GameOfKnowing wrote: post #4

This is true but also not at all the point of a review. Some tools are better suited for some tasks— reviews help those with the privilege of choice find the best ones for them. Otherwise you’d have a review of a hammer saying “this is a great tool for driving screws if you’re not afraid to get cREaTive with it!” Folks who need to make do with what they have already know about their constraints.

I took the article as talking about the difference between reviews that say “this computer is not going to be great at X” and the reviews that say “this machine is only good for office tasks or Y“. The gatekeeping tone.

It can do most anything. It may not be amazing, but people get buy. And they may be ok with it.

I saw tons of comments in the original post about the Neo from people who talked about how they used extremely old hand-me-down/used laptops to learn to start programming and fall in love with computers.

I was just watching a video from ETA PRIME who tests lots of small computers to see how good they are for gaming.

He was playing RoboCop on it, and it ran pretty well. 45-ish FPS. It was using 11 gigs of RAM at the time. So it was obviously in swap.

Is that ideal? No. But it works.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#35

Post by pocksuppet »

GavinMcG wrote: post #27
TheDong wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have an open source kernel. You can't recompile the kernel or build your own device drivers. I'm not sure what you mean by "learning about computers", but I personally find being able to peek into the kernel source code to be more educational than anything in the mac ecosystem. The hardware here is incredible, but it's crippled by not adequately supporting Linux, BSD, or any other properly open source kern…

I’d bet 99% of professional developers have never peeked at kernel source code or built their own device drivers.

It's something you never need to look at, until suddenly you do and then it's invaluable. Any time you format some data for another system and get a cryptic error code back, looking at the source code becomes invaluable.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#36

Post by pocksuppet »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #10
Animats wrote: post #7

Not enough memory -> can't do it. Not enough CPU -> can do it, but it's slow. (Ubuntu with the OOM killer - could do it, but when it filled half of memory, it was killed.)

Not enough memory is sometimes just a slowdown these days, with ssd and swap.

Swap has existed since Win95 btw

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#37

Post by MBCook »

artimaeis wrote: post #31
wolvoleo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't install a different OS on these? Are they different from the M series? Because those have Asahi Linux.

Asahi only supports M1 and M2 series Macs currently. The Neo uses an A18 Pro, which was only ever in an iPhone before. I wouldn’t count on Asahi coming to these soon.

I see no reason they couldn’t.

But we know there’s lots of other models that they’re already working on. We don’t know how similar or different it is from an OS perspective.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#38

Post by rafram »

TheDong wrote: post #24
bitmasher9 wrote: post #13

I hope they sell so many of these, because the Mac ecosystem is just better for learning about computers then what most young people use daily.

They don't have an open source kernel. You can't recompile the kernel or build your own device drivers. I'm not sure what you mean by "learning about computers", but I personally find being able to peek into the kernel source code to be more educational than anything in the mac ecosystem. The hardware here is incredible, but it's crippled by not adequately supporting Linux, BSD, or any other properly open source kern…

> You can't recompile the kernel or build your own device drivers.

I just don’t think this is what, like, nine-year-olds are looking for in a computer.

In any case, at least it’s good that they’re starting with macOS over Windows! Puts them on a good path to understanding that POSIX is the One True Paradigm and therefore makes them much more likely to compile their own kernel in the future.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#39

Post by rafram »

TheDong wrote: post #19

> The kid who tries to run Blender on a Chromebook doesn’t learn that his machine can’t handle it. He learns that Google decided he’s not allowed to. Or they learn to enable developer mode, unlock the bootloader, and install Linux, or use the officially supported Crostini, or so on. There's like 3 different ways to run Linux desktop apps on a modern Chromebook. The Macbooks don't let have an officially supported path…

The bootloader isn’t locked. Asahi’s developers have written about how Apple specifically built support for third-party OSes into the bootloader.

Re: “This is not the computer for you”

#40

Post by zamadatix »

idontwantthis wrote: post #22
fragmede wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days it would be an iPad though.

Or a chromebook which is probably worse.

Chromebooks themselves can actually be great machines for hacking (in the traditional sense, not the modern security/jailbreaking sense). E.g. https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en is arguably better than a direct typical Linux install because it's an isolated environment which won't break the main function of the device as you tinker.

As the page notes though, the real problem for kids is the devices are of course locked down:

> Important: If you use your Chromebook at work or school, you might not be able to use Linux. For more information, contact your administrator.

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